Steel City adopts bigger vinyl pipes

Canada’s Steel City, which has long insisted upon iron and concrete when choosing large-diameter pipes for municipal contracts, will now allow bigger vinyl pipes to feed the local water system.

Hamilton, Ont.’s shift to allow vinyl pipes up to a diameter of 750 mm (30 inches) came as the cash-strapped municipality searched for ways to save money.

“We must find new solutions to old problems,” Ward 6 Councillor Tom Jackson said after Monday’s Public Works, Infrastructure and Environment meeting.

More than 100 Canadian municipalities approve the use of large-diameter vinyl pipes. Thirty of them are in Ontario.

Kyoto Protocol and Infrastructure, a recent discussion paper released by the University of Toronto, has suggested that Canadian cities could meet 10 per cent of their targets for reducing greenhouse gases by replacing hydraulically deficient iron pipes with vinyl pipes.